Heavy casualties and flooding of battle zones due to heavy rain has forced a pause in Sri Lanka Army (SLA) operations in the north, specifically in north-western Mannar region.

Over 55 SLA soldiers were killed in heavy fighting between the SLA and the LTTE on Saturday, March 22 at Iththikkandal in Paalaikkuzhi, Mannar.

Around 120 SLA soldiers were wounded in the heavy fighting that lasted from 4:20 a.m. till 5:00 p.m. on Saturday in Paalaikkuzhi battlefront, according to the LTTE Operations Command in Mannar.

The fighting intensified as SLA captured some LTTE points in Paalaikkuzhi. The Tigers re-captured the points from the SLA and the fighting raged on as both the SLA and the LTTE were fighting for the control of the points.

Finally, at 5:00 p.m., the SLA was forced to retreat after 10 hours of fighting in which the SLA sustained heavy casualties.

On the same day, elite Black Sea Tigers, engaged in a confrontation with a Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) fleet in the seas off Mullaiththeevu, attacked and sunk a SLN Dvora Fast Attack Craft (FAC).

At least 14 SLN sailors were killed in the clashes. LTTE announced that three Black Sea Tigers, Lt. Col. Anpumaran, Major Niranjani and Major Kaninila, were killed in action in the fighting that lasted for 45 minutes.

The SLN claimed that the FAC had hit a sea mine and was completely destroyed before it sank. Denying confrontations in the sea, the SLN said it had launched a search operation to locate the missing sailors.

The next day, on Sunday, 4 SLA soldiers were killed and 7 wounded at Paalamoaddai in Vavuniyaa district, according to LTTE Vavuniyaa Operations Command. The fighting lasted for more than an hour.

Fighting was also reported on three fronts in the Northern Front at Kilaali, Naakarkoayil and Mukamaalai on Sunday. At least one SLA soldier was killed and several others were wounded when the Tigers counter attacked the SLA soldiers.

According to Sri Lankan military sources, other than the heavy casualties, another factor that is impeding operations is the flooding of battle zones in the northwest Mannar district.

Military spokesman Brigadier Udaya Nanyakkara said the offensive against the Tigers was continuing, but flooding had caused supply bottlenecks.

"Rain has created problems with some of the bunkers filled with water," Nanyakkara told Reuters. "The movement of vehicles and supplies are restricted to main roads, although much of the fighting relies on ground troops," he said.

Heavy rains have also prevented the army using helicopter gunships against the LTTE, who were digging new fortifications along the frontlines of their northern strongholds, according to Sri Lankan news paper, Sunday Times.

Ground forces were also held up by knee-high floodwaters and marshlands, with only sporadic artillery and mortar fire.

The Sri Lankan military, which has been battling to break through LTTE defences in Vanni from three fronts, has had no significant gains in over eight months of continuous attempts.

With no significant shifts in forward defence lines, the Sri Lankan military has resorted to claiming wildly exaggerated casualties for LTTE to claim the upper hand in battles.

According to the Sri Lankan government, it has killed 2,343 Tigers since January against the loss of 136 of its own troops.

In the latest news release the military claimed clashes on Saturday and Sunday in the districts of Mannar, Vavuniya and Manal Aaru left at least 100 LTTE and five soldiers dead.

Flash floods triggered by torrential rain have affected more than 170,000 people in the war-torn Mannar and Batticaloa districts of Sri Lanka.

Over 50,000 people in Mannar and 120,000 in the eastern Batticaloa District have been affected by flooding caused by heavy rain which also left five dead, the National Disaster Relief Services Centre (NDRSC) said on 19 March.

In Batticaloa rain forced more than 7,000 people from their homes, with some taking shelter in schools and mosques, officials said.

Some of the flood victims were families living in basic camps, who had already been displaced by renewed war between the Government and Liberation Tigers.

“A total of 7,200 people have been displaced in Batticaloa due to the heavy rains,” said Keerthi Ekanayake, national coordinator at the National Disaster Management Centre.

"Of those there are about 600-700 people who were in IDP (internally displaced) camps who were already displaced by battles," he added.

An estimated 5,000 war-displaced are still living in camps in Batticaloa district, waiting to be resettled in areas that are still military high security zones.

The camp conditions are often basic, the sandy soil floors of the shelters sodden during heavy rain, and some families have had to sit on their haunches through the night to avoid lying down in water.

In Mannar, “floods have caused immense damage to affected areas, interrupting all economic and social activities,” the NDRSC stated in a situation report.

“It is also reported that there is tremendous damage to infrastructure facilities in the areas [of Mannar]. About 14,010 families or 54,323 people have been affected.”

Government officials in Mannar told UN news agency, IRIN, they had began distributing relief items and were awaiting assessment reports to decide on additional assistance.

“We started distributing meals almost as soon as the first displacements were reported over the weekend,” A Nicholaspillai, Government Agent for Mannar district told IRIN.

“We have made initial plans to continue the distribution for three days at least,” he added.

The area has witnessed intense clashes between government forces and the Liberation Tigers during the last six months, restricting access to relief agencies.

Continuing clashes between government forces and the LTTE along the line of control in Mannar had already restricted access to the district before the latest flooding.

“Since 4 February, access has been restricted to vehicles north of Madawachchiya checkpoint, creating additional challenges for civilian travel across Mannar District,” the Inter-Agency Standing Committee stated in a situation report released on 15 March.

In January, more than 30,000 people were displaced in the east by monsoon flooding, while in December 175,000 people took refuge in welfare centres and temples in the eastern and central parts of the country following flash floods.

Political parties in Tamil Nadu, including ones in the India’s coalition central government, have said that military aid to neighboring Sri Lanka should be stopped.

The Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) and Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), constituents of the Dravidar Munnetra Kazhagam -led DPA in Tamil Nadu, on March 13 accused the Central government India of functioning in contravention to Tamils' expectations on the Sri Lankan issue.

"Tamils in India wanted an amicable solution to the ethnic crisis in the island nation. But the Union Government's activities are contrary to their expectations," PMK founder S Ramadoss and VCK general secretary Thol. Tirumavalavan said in a joint statement after holding a meeting to discuss the issue.

They alleged that the Sri Lankan Government was attempting to resolve the problem through military means, by launching a 'brutal attack' on the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Calling for a change in the Central Government’s approach to the issue, they said India should stop providing assistance and training to the Sri Lankan Army.

Ramadoss said both the PMK and the VCK would raise the Lankan issue in the coming budget session of the state Assembly.

"We are prepared for any sacrifice on the issue," he added.

Further commenting on the issue, G.K. Mani, president of PMK, which has five members in the lower house of Parliament, said an offensive by the Sri Lanka Army in the north is a matter of ‘grave concern’ as ethnic Tamils are the main target and civilians are being killed.

“All the people who are being massacred in Sri Lanka are Tamils. They are our brethren,” he said.

“They have already killed a lot of Tamil people. India should stop this.”

India must stop “training officers of the Sri Lankan army and should not supply weapons,” Mani said.

“India has a lot of members belonging to the Tamil community. People who are being killed in Sri Lanka are Tamils. People living in Tamil Nadu feel the pain. They feel as if their own people are being killed.”

TamilNadu, the mainly Tamil state is India's sixth-most populous with 62 million people, according to the 2001 census.

India “should ask the Sri Lankan government to find a political solution and end its military offensive,” Mani said.

“If Norway can step in and try to solve the crisis then India should not shy away. India is Sri Lanka's neighbour.”

In the interview, Thol Thirumavalavan, the founder of VCK, said: “India is giving moral and military support, it must stop at once.”

“It even gave a warm welcome to the Sri Lankan military chief. This is not appropriate from our viewpoint,” he said.

India's ban on the LTTE should be removed by holding a referendum in Tamil Nadu, Thirumavalavan said.

“Some bureaucrats took the decision without consulting the people.”

The Communist Party of India (CPI) also took up the issue Indian military assistance to Sri Lanka during Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of the Indian Parliament).

The National General Secretary of the CPI, D. Raja, launched a no-holds-barred attack on the Central Government during deploring the Indian Government for “not uttering a word against the deployment of sea-mines by the Sri Lankan Government” in the Palk Straits and for giving training to the Sri Lankan army in a "clandestine" manner.

"What is the policy of the Government of India, and why is the Government of India keeping quiet on the question of sea-mines? Why the Government of India is extending all kinds of military support to the Sri Lankan Government?" he asked.

He sought to know why New Delhi was keen on helping a rogue nation that was "violating various international conventions" relating to land and sea mines, and asked the Indian Government to declare its policy.

He noted that "the military offensive in Sri Lanka has been gradually turning to be a war against the Tamils" and "all sorts of human rights violations are taking place" in the war-torn island.

Tamil National Movement leader Pala Nedumaran, along with two hundred members of the Tamil Eelam Supporters Co-ordination Committee (TESCC) staged a demonstration Saturday March 22, to condemn the Indian Government's military aid to the genocidal Sri Lankan Government.

Nedumaran condemned the Indian Government for secretly imparting training to Sri Lankan Army personnel who were carrying out a genocide against Tamil people. He pointed out that any military support to Sri Lanka would be used only against innocent Tamils.

Slogans condemning the Indian Government, and the Tamil Nadu Government were raised.

Several leaders of various political and non-political organizations took part in the agitation: Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam Presidium Committee Member Anoor Jagdeesan, Devendra Kula Vellalar Kootamaippu President Pasupathi Pandian, Tamil Desa Podhuvudamai Kadchi President Maniarasan and Tamil Desa Viduthalai Iyakkam Secretary Thiaygu.

Dravidar Kazhagam also registered its protest against Indian military assistance to the Rajapakse regime and passed a resolution demanding a change in Indian Government policy. The organisation also announced plans to stage state wide protests on March 28 to express their solidarity with Tamils in Northeast of Sri Lanka.

The resolution further said the 80 million strong Tamil community in TamilNadu and around the world are disappointed and condemn India’s military support to Sri Lanka which contradicts with its stated policy of negotiated settlement for the island’s long dragging ethnic conflict.

No military solution

The central government of India, which provided $500 million aid to Sri Lanka in additional military assistance including training, repeated its customary call for negotiated political solution.

“The way forward lies in a peacefully negotiated settlement within the framework of a united Sri Lanka acceptable to all communities, including Tamils,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a letter to a Marumalarchi Dravidar Munnetra Kazhagam, General Secretary Viako.

In the letter dated March 5, 2008, the Indian premier further said the interests of the Tamils in Sri Lanka was of particular significance to India in the country's dealings with the island nation.

In his letter, Mr. Singh also endorsed Sri Lanka’s move to implement the 13th amendment and refused to take action against the Sri Lankan Navy for routinely killing Indian fisherman in Palk Straits.

Responding to the Indian premier’s letter Viako condemned Indian naval officers for endorsing "atrocious, false statements" of the Sri Lanka Navy.

"Our naval, army and air-force officers are working hands in glove with the Sri Lanka military officers. Because of this factor, our navy officials deliberately do suppress the real facts and make false statements furnishing wrong information to the government, which is glaringly exposed in your letter," he said in a letter.

Vaiko questioned why the Indian Government had failed in its duty to "give stern warning" to the Sri Lankan Government to stop attacking Indian fisherment. He charged that by failing to protect the lives of the Tamil Nadu fishermen from the SLN, India had betrayed the Tamils.

Responding to Manmohan Singh's endorsement of the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, the MDMK leader pointed out that New Delhi had been easily hoodwinked by the Government of Sri Lanka.

India should have raised serious objections when the Sri Lankan government moved Supreme Court for a demerger, he said and added that the Tamils had long ago rejected the 13th amendment.

He pointed out that the Sri Lankan government had "sabotaged" the Norway-initiated peace talks, and was presently perpetrating a "genocidal murderous attack" on the Tamils by acquiring arms from various countries.

On the other hand, the Tamils in Sri Lanka were dying of hunger, starvation and lack of medical aid, and yet, India had refused to give clearance to send food and medicines to the suffering Tamils.

Vaiko also noted that it was a "matter of sorrow and shame" that the Indian Government had not condemned the murder of four Tamil Members of Parliament by the GoSL forces whereas its strategic help to Sri Lanka, through the supply of radars and military hardware, only enabled the GoSL to pursue military attacks. He labeled the red-carpet welcome to Sri Lankan Lt Gen Sarath Fonseka by the Indian Government as a black day for the Tamils.

However according to a leading Indian academic, India's government isn't going to change its policy on Sri Lanka because of demands from Tamil political parties.

India is providing ‘non-lethal’ weapons and trains Sri Lankan military officers, N. Manoharan, senior research fellow at the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies said.

“This government is at the last lap of its mandate,” Manoharan said, referring to general elections due to be held next year.

“I do not think the government will take any serious steps based on the statements made by these parties. They are going to stick to the stated policy.”

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) from its Head Quarters in Vanni March 10 released a statement condemning the Indian 'State welcome' extended to Sri Lanka Army Chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka and the statements made by Indian military chiefs in this context.

"The Indian State must take the responsibility for the ethnic genocide of the Tamils that will be carried out by the Sinhala military, re-invigorated by such moves of the Indian State," the statement said.

"LTTE wishes to point out to the Indian State that by this historic blunder, it will continue to subject the Eelam Tamils to misery and put them in the dangerous situation of having to face ethnic genocide on a massive scale."

The view expressed by the Indian military chiefs, "India wants to ensure that the Sri Lankan Army maintains its upperhand over the LTTE", just illustrates the efforts of the Indian State to prop up the Sinhala war machine, the LTTE statement said.

The Indian State’s move of "propping up the politically-militarily-economically weakened SriLankan State has upset Eelam Tamils."

"We did not leave the ceasefire agreement and we did not start the war. We are only undertaking a defensive war against the war of ethnic genocide of the Sri Lankan State."

"We still have not abandoned the Norway sponsored peace efforts and we are ready to take part in such efforts."

Full text of the LTTE statement follows:

Head Quarters
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
Tamil Eelam
10 March 2008


Is the Indian State attempting yet another historic blunder?

The State welcome given by the Indian State to the Sri Lanka military chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka, who is heading the Sri Lankan State’s war of ethnic genocide against the Eelam Tamils, has deeply hurt them.

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) strongly condemns the Indian State action of extending a State welcome to the military chief of the Sinhala State which has unilaterally abrogated the ceasefire agreement and has launched widespread military offensives in the Tamil homeland.

The Sri Lankan State is facing many warnings and condemnations for its attempt to seek a military solution and for its enormous human rights violations.

Despite this, the Sinhala State ignores these warnings and condemnations and continues with its abductions, killings, and arrests of Tamils.

The Sinhala State, keen to cover up this truth, is blaming the freedom movement of the Tamils, the LTTE, for the continuation of the war and is seeking assistance from the world for its war of ethnic genocide.

Many of the European countries, understanding this hidden motive of the Sinhala State, have halted all assistance that could support the ethnic genocide of the Tamils.

The Indian State also knows this truth. Yet, while pronouncing that a solution to the Tamil problem must be found through peaceful means, it is giving encouragement to the military approach of the Sinhala State. This can only lead to the intensification of the genocide of the Tamils.

LTTE wishes to point out to the Indian State that by this historic blunder it will continue to subject the Eelam Tamils to misery and put them in the dangerous situation of having to face ethnic genocide on a massive scale. On behalf of the Eelam Tamils, LTTE kindly requests the Tamils of Tamil Nadu to understand this anti-Tamil move of the Indian State and express their condemnation.

We did not leave the ceasefire agreement and we did not start the war. We are only undertaking a defensive war against the war of ethnic genocide of the Sri Lankan State.

We still have not abandoned the Norway sponsored peace efforts and we are ready to take part in such efforts.

In this context, the Indian State’s move of propping up the politically-militarily-economically weakened SriLankan State has upset Eelam Tamils.

The view expressed by the Indian military chiefs, "India wants to ensure that the Sri Lankan Army maintains its upperhand over the LTTE", just illustrates the efforts of the Indian State to prop up the Sinhala war machine.

The Indian State must take the responsibility for the ethnic genocide of the Tamils that will be carried out by the Sinhala military re-invigorated by such moves of the Indian State.

Carrying the red and yellow flag, an impressive number of South Africans of Indian Origin, demonstrated outside the Indian Consulate in Durban on Thursday, March 20, to register their collective opposition to the military oppression of Tamils in Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan Government.

They appealed to the Indian government to stop military assistance to the Government of Sri Lanka. While the Chairperson of the South African Human Rights Commission received the memorandum of the demonstrators and spoke to them, the Indian Consulate refused to accept it. Except a negligibly few Eezham Tamils, the vast majority of the demonstrators were people of Indian origin.

South Africans of Indian origin prote-sting in Durban against India selling arms to Sri Lanka.

The demonstration was organised by the Tamil Co-ordinating Committee of South Africa to coincide with the Human rights Day in South Africa, falling on 21 March. South Africa is home to the largest number of Tamils living outside of India, more than 700 000, of which approximately 340 000 reside in KwaZulu Natal and its surrounds.

Mr D Maduray, member of TCC-SA handed a memorandum to the Chairperson of the South African Human Rights Commission, Mr Jody Kollapen. A memorandum was also to be handed over to a representative of the Indian Consulate but the Consulate refused to accept it.

Mr Maduray stated, “India as a superpower in the region has done absolutely nothing about the Sri Lankan Government withdrawing from the Ceasefire Agreement and we object to the military support that India is giving to the Sri Lankan Government to murder innocent people.” He also said “the Indian Government is demonstrating their contempt for the Tamil people by refusing to accept the memorandum.”

On acceptance of the memorandum Mr J Kollapen, chairperson of the SAHRC said “the Universal Declaration of Human rights means that human beings all over the world are regarded as equals and are entitled to enjoy simple rights like living in your country of birth, speaking your language, practising your culture and religion, but 60 years later, millions around the world do not enjoy their human rights like the people in Palestine, Iraq and Sri Lanka, particularly the Tamils.”

He also said “South Africa achieved its liberation because millions of people across the world stood with us” “This is not a Tamil issue. Our challenge in South Africa is to take this issue beyond the Tamil community.”

“The truth is we cannot be free when people in other parts of the world are not free,” he said.

South Africa was the land that moulded Gandhi to become Mahatma. While in South Africa, Gandhi was in close association with the Tamils and learnt to read and write Tamil. He always remembered with humility and thanks the contribution of South African Tamils against racism and discrimination. The life sacrifice of the young Tamil girl Va’l’liyammai during a demonstration was even recorded in his ‘My Experiments with Truth’.

"The representatives of today’s independent India behaved worse than the British Raj in their contempt to a memorandum from the people of Indian origin," said one of the demonstrators to TamilNet correspondent in Durban.

FOR 25 years, the dirty little war on the island in the Indian Ocean has stretched its octopus arms across the world. The ethnic Tamil diaspora has provided vital funding for separatist Tamil Tigers; remittances from Sri Lankan workers abroad have propped up the economy; the government has relied on foreign assistance to battle the insurgency.

Today, a shifting world order is bearing new fruits for Sri Lanka. Most notably, China’s quiet assertion in India’s backyard has put Sri Lanka’s government in a position not only to play China off against India, but also to ignore complaints from outside Asia about human rights violations in the war.

The timing is propitious. The government jettisoned a five-year cease-fire this year, and is now banking on a military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. In so doing, it has faced a barrage of criticism over human rights abuses and has lost defense aid from the United States and some other sources. And, in recent months, government officials have increasingly cozied up to countries that tend to say little to nothing on things like abductions and assaults on press freedom.

Sri Lanka’s foreign secretary, Palitha Kohona, put it plainly when he said that Sri Lanka’s “traditional donors,” namely, the United States, Canada and the European Union, had “receded into a very distant corner,” to be replaced by countries in the East. He gave three reasons: The new donors are neighbors; they are rich; and they conduct themselves differently. “Asians don’t go around teaching each other how to behave,” he said. “There are ways we deal with each other — perhaps a quiet chat, but not wagging the finger.”

The Tamil Tigers, for their part, have succeeded in getting themselves classified as a terrorist group in many countries, including the United States, Canada and the European Union, making it harder for the guerrillas to raise money abroad.

At the same time, according to Mr. Kohona, Chinese assistance has grown fivefold in the last year to nearly $1 billion, eclipsing Sri Lanka’s longtime biggest donor, Japan. The Chinese are building a highway, developing two power plants and putting up a new port in the hometown of the president of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Sri Lanka also buys a lot of weapons from China and China’s ally Pakistan.
Chinese diplomacy in South Asia, grounded as it is in a policy of “harmony” and deep pockets, is of obvious concern to India. So are the sentiments of Tamils at home. Overt support from India for the Sri Lankan counterinsurgency program can be explosive among India’s Tamils. But coming down hard on the government here could push Sri Lanka deeper into China’s embrace.

“There is little choice,” said Ashok Kumar Mehta, a retired general who was a leader of an Indian peacekeeping force in Sri Lanka nearly 20 years ago.

“India’s policy is virtually hands off.”

Mr. Kohona, the Sri Lankan foreign secretary, noted that India’s contributions had also grown, to nearly $500 million this year. India is building a coal-fired power plant and Indian companies have been invited to build technology parks and invest in telecommunications. New Delhi, like Washington, has shut the tap on direct military support, but it can still help with crucial intelligence, particularly in intercepting weapons smuggled by sea.

The picture in Sri Lanka is emblematic of a major shift from 20 years ago, when India was the only power center in the region. Now come China’s artful moves in India’s backyard. As C. Raja Mohan, an international relations professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, points out, China has started building a circle of road-and-port connections in India’s neighboring countries, and it has begun to eye a role in the Indian Ocean, as its thirst for natural resources makes it more important to secure the sea lanes.

That offers countries like Sri Lanka ample opportunities. “Now the smaller countries have increasingly turned to China to influence India’s strategic interests, and thus silence it on human rights issues,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch. She cited Burma, where, in the 1990s, India pressed for democracy and watched the military junta sidle up to Beijing. “Now India is concerned about China’s role in Sri Lanka because of control over the Indian Ocean,” she said.

Iran is the latest entrant. Late last year came the promise of a whopping $1.6 billion line of credit, primarily to help Sri Lanka buy Iranian oil.

Washington still counts. Sri Lanka is sore at losing American military aid and development assistance. The United States has also irritated the government by pressing for United Nations human rights monitors after the visit last October of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour. She said at the end of her visit that “the weakness of the rule of law and prevalence of impunity is alarming.”

That infuriated the government. Sri Lanka’s mission in Geneva sent out acerbic opinion pieces published in Sri Lankan newspapers. One, an editorial in the pro-government newspaper, The Island, declared that “those U.N. knights in shining armor tilting at windmills in small countries should be told that the protection of human rights is next to impossible during a fiercely fought war.” Still, criticism over human rights continues to dog Sri Lanka.

Last Thursday, a report by Human Rights Watch blamed the government for a pattern of disappearances. The same day, an international Group of Eminent Persons that the government had invited to monitor Sri Lankan investigations into human rights violations said it was leaving; it cited “a lack of political and institutional will.”

The attorney general’s office responded by saying that the government would reconstitute the panel with “an alternate group of eminent persons.”

But however free Sri Lanka feels to dismiss Western concerns about human rights these days, there are still long-range costs it may find itself confronting one day. The real Achilles’ heel for the government is looming economic trouble, as its war chest expands and inflation reaches double digits.

And in that, the world matters. For its failure to ratify certain international conventions, Sri Lanka already risks losing trade preferences with the European Union at the end of this year. And, however much China has risen in importance, Europe remains this country’s largest trading partner.

ALL too many regions of the contemporary world are afflicted with recurring outbreaks of warfare between nation-states and ethnic or sectarian minorities. One of the worst has been festering for the past quarter-century in Sri Lanka, where 70,000 people have perished in intermittent fighting between a government dominated by a Sinhalese Buddhist majority and minority Tamils, who are mostly Hindu.

Over the past two years, that war flared up worse than ever. In January, Sri Lanka's president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, disavowed a 2002 cease-fire that Norwegian mediators had negotiated between the government and the armed group known as Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Cease-fire monitors from several Nordic countries were then called home. The monitors had been sidelined for the past year while the army assaulted the predominantly Tamil eastern and northern provinces and the Tigers responded with attacks on army forces in the north and east as well as bombings in the capital, Colombo.

The government, under pressure from Sinhalese hard-liners, has opted to end the conflict by winning the war. Political and military leaders speak of crushing the Tigers by the end of the year. They insist the Tigers are nothing but terrorists and that once their funding from abroad is cut off, the army will solve the conflict over Tamil minority rights by wiping out the Tigers.

The reality is not so simple. A recent Human Rights Watch report shows how Rajapaksa's government has committed grave human rights abuses. In its 241-page report, "Recurring Nightmare: State Responsibility for 'Disappearances' and Abductions in Sri Lanka," the human rights group documents a pattern of abductions of civilians by security forces. The report calls on the government to acknowledge its "responsibility for large-scale disappearances and take all steps necessary to stop the practice."

Human Rights Watch also calls on the Tigers to "cease abductions and extrajudicial executions." Still, it is hard to deny that the government's human rights violations deprive it of the ethical high ground.

Asian powers China and India, competing for influence in Sri Lanka, do not help its government by withholding criticism. At bottom, Sri Lanka's conflict is political, and it must be resolved by political means. A lasting solution will require that the central government grant meaningful self-rule to the Tamil region, perhaps in a confederal structure that maintains the unity of the country. Continuing attempts to resolve the conflict militarily can only produce more suffering and more war

Five years on, and still we have not learnt. With each anniversary, the steps crumble beneath our feet, the stones ever more cracked, the sand ever finer. Five years of catastrophe in Iraq and I think of Churchill, who in the end called Palestine a "hell-disaster".

But we have used these parallels before and they have drifted away in the Tigris breeze. Iraq is swamped in blood. Yet what is the state of our remorse? Why, we will have a public inquiry – but not yet! If only inadequacy was our only sin.

Today, we are engaged in a fruitless debate. What went wrong? How did the people – the senatus populusque Romanus of our modern world – not rise up in rebellion when told the lies about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam's links with Osama bin Laden and 11 September? How did we let it happen? And how come we didn't plan for the aftermath of war?

Oh, the British tried to get the Americans to listen, Downing Street now tells us. We really, honestly did try, before we absolutely and completely knew it was right to embark on this illegal war. There is now a vast literature on the Iraq debacle and there are precedents for post-war planning – of which more later – but this is not the point. Our predicament in Iraq is on an infinitely more terrible scale.

As the Americans came storming up Iraq in 2003, their cruise missiles hissing through the sandstorm towards a hundred Iraqi towns and cities, I would sit in my filthy room in the Baghdad Palestine Hotel, unable to sleep for the thunder of explosions, and root through the books I'd brought to fill the dark, dangerous hours. Tolstoy's War and Peace reminded me how conflict can be described with sensitivity and grace and horror – I recommend the Battle of Borodino – along with a file of newspaper clippings. In this little folder, there was a long rant by Pat Buchanan, written five months earlier; and still, today I feel its power and its prescience and its absolute historical honesty: "With our MacArthur Regency in Baghdad, Pax Americana will reach apogee. But then the tide recedes, for the one endeavour at which Islamic people excel is expelling imperial powers by terror or guerrilla war.

"They drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden, the French out of Algeria, the Russians out of Afghanistan, the Americans out of Somalia and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. We have started up the road to empire and over the next hill we will meet those who went before. The only lesson we learn from history is that we do not learn from history."

How easily the little men took us into the inferno, with no knowledge or, at least, interest in history. None of them read of the 1920 Iraqi insurgency against British occupation, nor of Churchill's brusque and brutal settlement of Iraq the following year.

On our historical radars, not even Crassus appeared, the wealthiest Roman general of all, who demanded an emperorship after conquering Macedonia – "Mission Accomplished" – and vengefully set forth to destroy Mesopotamia. At a spot in the desert near the Euphrates river, the Parthians – ancestors of present day Iraqi insurgents – annihilated the legions, chopped off Crassus's head and sent it back to Rome filled with gold. Today, they would have videotaped his beheading.

To their monumental hubris, these little men who took us to war five years ago now prove that they have learnt nothing. Anthony Blair – as we should always have called this small town lawyer – should be facing trial for his mendacity. Instead, he now presumes to bring peace to an Arab-Israeli conflict which he has done so much to exacerbate. And now we have the man who changed his mind on the legality of war – and did so on a single sheet of A4 paper – daring to suggest that we should test immigrants for British citizenship. Question 1, I contend, should be: Which blood-soaked British attorney general helped to send 176 British soldiers to their deaths for a lie? Question 2: How did he get away with it?

But in a sense, the facile, dumbo nature of Lord Goldsmith's proposal is a clue to the whole transitory, cardboard structure of our decision-making. The great issues that face us – be they Iraq or Afghanistan, the US economy or global warming, planned invasions or "terrorism" – are discussed not according to serious political timetables but around television schedules and press conferences.

Will the first air raids on Iraq hit prime-time television in the States? Mercifully, yes. Will the first US troops in Baghdad appear on the breakfast shows? Of course. Will Saddam's capture be announced by Bush and Blair simultaneously?.

But this is all part of the problem. True, Churchill and Roosevelt argued about the timing of the announcement that war in Europe had ended. And it was the Russians who pipped them to the post. But we told the truth. When the British were retreating to Dunkirk, Churchill announced that the Germans had "penetrated deeply and spread alarm and confusion in their tracks".

Why didn't Bush or Blair tell us this when the Iraqi insurgents began to assault the Western occupation forces? Well, they were too busy telling us that things were getting better, that the rebels were mere "dead-enders".

On 17 June 1940, Churchill told the people of Britain: "The news from France is very bad and I grieve for the gallant French people who have fallen into this terrible misfortune." Why didn't Blair or Bush tell us that the news from Iraq was very bad and that they grieved – even just a few tears for a minute or so – for the Iraqis?

For these were the men who had the temerity, the sheer, unadulterated gall, to dress themselves up as Churchill, heroes who would stage a rerun of the Second World War, the BBC dutifully calling the invaders "the Allies" – they did, by the way – and painting Saddam's regime as the Third Reich.

Of course, when I was at school, our leaders – Attlee, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, or Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy in the United States – had real experience of real war. Not a single Western leader today has any first-hand experience of conflict. When the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq began, the most prominent European opponent of the war was Jacques Chirac, who fought in the Algerian conflict. But he has now gone. So has Colin Powell, a Vietnam veteran but himself duped by Rumsfeld and the CIA.

Yet one of the terrible ironies of our times is that the most bloodthirsty of American statesmen – Bush and Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfovitz – have either never heard a shot fired in anger or have ensured they did not have to fight for their country when they had the chance to do so. No wonder Hollywood titles like "Shock and Awe" appeal to the White House. Movies are their only experience of human conflict; the same goes for Blair and Brown.

Churchill had to account for the loss of Singapore before a packed House. Brown won't even account for Iraq until the war is over.

It is a grotesque truism that today – after all the posturing of our political midgets five years ago – we might at last be permitted a valid seance with the ghosts of the Second World War. Statistics are the medium, and the room would have to be dark. But it is a fact that the total of US dead in Iraq (3,978) is well over the number of American casualties suffered in the initial D-Day landings at Normandy (3,384 killed and missing) on 6 June, 1944, or more than three times the total British casualties at Arnhem the same year (1,200).

They count for just over a third of the total fatalities (11,014) of the entire British Expeditionary Force from the German invasion of Belgium to the final evacuation at Dunkirk in June 1940. The number of British dead in Iraq – 176 – is almost equal to the total of UK forces lost at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944-45 (just over 200). The number of US wounded in Iraq – 29,395 – is more than nine times the number of Americans injured on 6 June (3,184) and more than a quarter of the tally for US wounded in the entire 1950-53 Korean war (103,284).

Iraqi casualties allow an even closer comparison to the Second World War. Even if we accept the lowest of fatality statistics for civilian dead – they range from 350,000 up to a million – these long ago dwarfed the number of British civilian dead in the flying-bomb blitz on London in 1944-45 (6,000) and now far outnumber the total figure for civilians killed in bombing raids across the United Kingdom – 60,595 dead, 86,182 seriously wounded – from 1940 to 1945.

Indeed, the Iraqi civilian death toll since our invasion is now greater than the total number of British military fatalities in the Second World War, which came to an astounding 265,000 dead (some histories give this figure as 300,000) and 277,000 wounded. Minimum estimates for Iraqi dead mean that the civilians of Mesopotamia have suffered six or seven Dresdens or – more terrible still – two Hiroshimas.

Yet in a sense, all this is a distraction from the awful truth in Buchanan's warning. We have dispatched our armies into the land of Islam. We have done so with the sole encouragement of Israel, whose own false intelligence over Iraq has been discreetly forgotten by our masters, while weeping crocodile tears for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died.

America's massive military prestige has been irreparably diminished. And if there are, as I now calculate, 22 times as many Western troops in the Muslim world as there were at the time of the 11th and 12th century Crusades, we must ask what we are doing. Are we there for oil? For democracy? For Israel? For fear of weapons of mass destruction? Or for fear of Islam?

We blithely connect Afghanistan to Iraq. If only Washington had not become distracted by Iraq, so the narrative now goes, the Taliban could not have re-established themselves. But al-Qa'ida and the nebulous Osama bin Laden were not distracted. Which is why they expanded their operations into Iraq and then used this experience to assault the West in Afghanistan with the hitherto – in Afghanistan – unheard of suicide bomber.

And I will hazard a terrible guess: that we have lost Afghanistan as surely as we have lost Iraq and as surely as we are going to "lose" Pakistan. It is our presence, our power, our arrogance, our refusal to learn from history and our terror – yes, our terror – of Islam that is leading us into the abyss. And until we learn to leave these Muslim peoples alone, our catastrophe in the Middle East will only become graver. There is no connection between Islam and "terror". But there is a connection between our occupation of Muslim lands and "terror". It's not too complicated an equation. And we don't need a public inquiry to get it right.

Expatriate Tamils in London last weekend held a remembrance ceremony for Rohan Rajasingham, an accomplished sportsman who strove against institutionalized Sinhala majoritarianism to better the conditions for aspiring Tamil sportsmen and women in Sri Lanka. Rajasingham passed away on January 8, 2008 after a brief battle with cancer, aged 50.

Described as outstanding student by his former classmates at Mahajana College, Tellippalai, Rajasingham represented his college at football, hockey, cricket and in athletics, and captained the teams to championship wins in football and hockey.

Led by Rajasingham, Mahajana College team won the all island Singer Shield football tournament at Sugathasa stadium, Colombo, under flood lights in front of a large crowd in 1978, classmates recalled. In 1980, Rajasingham joined Grasshoppers Sports Club, one of the best hockey team in the island.

In 1994, Rajasingham completed his Diploma in Athletics. In 1996 he travelled to Brazil where he acquired a Diploma in Brazilian Football. That year he also gained a Diploma in Coaching and Training in India.

However, in Sri Lanka itself, Rajasingham, along with other Tamil sports players, struggled against entrenched anti-Tamil chauvinism in national sports bodies.

“He was amongst the first to experience the darker side of sports in Sri Lanka; his experience is very much that of today’s youngsters,” classmates at the Mahajana Old Students Society said.

Rajasingham’s ability to speak all three languages – Tamil, Sinhala and English – allowed him to overcome hurdles other Tamil youths could not.

Starting his carrier as a Sports officer in 1986, Rajasingham attended the Sports Officers programme offered by the National Institute of Sports Science (NISS).

The nine-month course was conducted in Sinhala as prescribed in the 1973 Sports Law which specifies that the medium of instruction should be Sinhala.

Along with others, Rajasingham agitated for changes. It was only a decade later, in 1996, that the NISS agreed to hold its examinations in Tamil as well. However lectures and field instruction are in Sinhala still.

His experiences of discrimination spurred Rajasingham to strive for the development of sports training in the Northeast. “His dedication to improve the education of sports officers and physical education teachers continued until his untimely passing away,” a classmate said.

In the early nineties, Rajasingham coached Northeastern teams in netball, football, hockey and athletics, many taking championship trophies.

In 1997 he took up a role in the Sports Planning Office in the North, at the same time coaching the Northeast football team which took third place in national competitions in1998, 2001 and 2002.

The period coincided with the height of President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s ‘War for Peace’.

Rajasingham also sought to establish the Sports Science Institute (SSI) in military-occupied Jaffna with the intention it would be affiliated to the NISS.

In 1999 he submitted a proposal to the Director of NISS. After two years of silence, Sri Lanka’s Director General of Sports rejected the proposal.

Dismayed, Rajasingham turned to battling other aspects of the state discrimination that aspiring Tamil sportspeople were facing, notably the lack of facilities, funding and opportunities in the Northeast.

He reached out to the Tamil Diaspora for support and encouragement and was welcomed.

In 2002 he helped to put together a cricket team from the University of Jaffna to visit Britain.

The next year, he trained and brought a netball team from the Northeast to the UK; it sparkled, beating all rivals pitted against it.

Rajasingham was instrumental in establishing a sports academy for Northeast. The initiative was enthusiastically supported by the Tamil School Sports Association (TSSA), UK, which welcomed the idea and worked on a comprehensive plan and budget.

As a consequence, the Sports Academy of the NorthEast (SANE) was registered as an NGO in Jaffna and later in Kilinochchi.

After 2004’s devastating tsunami, SANE, with the help of international NGOs, established sports fields near the clusters of temporary shelters in the coastal areas in Vadamarachchi East and Mullaitivu.

Planning began for permanent sports facilities next to proposed sites of permanent resettlement.

Amid the scramble for international reconstruction funding, Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Sports came up with a proposal to build a stadium in Kilinochchi. But nothing came of it.

In 2006, Rajasingham took up the position of District Sports Officer in Kilinochchi and moved there with his wife and three young children. He designed and built a modest building to host all of SANE’s operations. The project was funded by TSSA(UK).

Rajasingham trained sports officers as well as athletics and netball teams and organized sports tournaments. The goal, he insisted, was to develop sports in the Northeast to an international level and for that, a foundational cadre of dedicated and well trained instructors was essential.

An emerging picture in recent times in Europe and North America is the active and successful participation of Tamils in the local politics. The new impetus seems to be coming from the younger generation of Eezham Tamils. Twelve candidates of Tamil origins have been elected to the local bodies of Paris and suburbs in the local government elections concluded last Sunday in France. Seven of them are Eezham Tamils while three are of Pondicheri origins and one each of Mauritius and Guaduloupe background.

Six of the twelve Tamils elected to local bodies in and around Paris, France.  Photo TamilNet

The French – Tamil connections are a long legacy ever since the French East India Company was established at Pondicheri in 1664. The French and the Danish (at Tharangkampaadi) were the two European powers who thought of having their colonial headquarters in the land of Tamils.

A considerable part of the modern history of Tamils had a strong link to the colonial history of the French. Tamils migrated to various French colonies across the world and a representative group are living in France today. A large number of Tamils who have made France their home are from Pondicheri who migrated to France with the annexation of French territories by independent India.

Pongkal festival participated by six organisations of Tamils from different parts of the world in Paris in January, 2008. Seen in the photograph is a Tamil band called Inniyam, a recent innovation of the Eastern University in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. [Photo Courtesy: appaal-tamil.com]

A program given by Caribbean Tamils at the Pongkal celebrations. [Photo Courtesy: appaal-tamil.com]Even though Tamils have found representation in French politics, new inspirations came with the arrival of Eezham Tamils, shaping and giving form to a common Tamil identity in France.

Around 125,000 Tamils are estimated to be living in France. Of them, around 50,000 are Eezham Tamils.

A significant event that took place in Paris last January was Tamils of all shades jointly celebrating Pongkal as a common festival of Tamil identity.

Another noticeable manifestation of the emerging cultural consciousness is the presence of four Tamil bookshops in the La Chapelle area of Paris.

Fourteen Eezham Tamils contested in the local government elections in early March in Paris and suburbs alone. Five were elected in the first round. In addition, Two Pondicheri Tamils and Mrs. Lilawtee Rajendram, a Mauritiun Tamil married to an Eezham Tamil were also elected in the first rounds.

A striking feature of the concluded elections is that almost all the elected Eezham Tamils belong to left wing political parties. Observers identify a subtle message of Tamil unhappiness conveyed to the present right wing government, says writer Ki.Pi. Aravindan in Paris.


Thilagawathy Sanmuganathan, Thusyanthy Ganechandra, Sumathi Wijeyaraj and Khamshajiny Gunaratnam were elected to municipal and local councils in Oslo and Akershus in 2007. [Photo Courtesy: notam.no]Last year, in Norway, eight Eezham Tamils, five of them women, were elected to the local bodies. Two of the women were aged 19 and 22 when they got elected.

According to Statistics Norway, a Norwegian government survey, 70 percent of Eezham Tamil women participated in the voting which is the highest among the migrants in Norway.

Political consciousness, education and long established familiarity with the norms of democratic politics are said to be the reasons behind the diaspora Tamil political activism.

The details of candidates elected in Paris and suburbs are:

Mme Naguleswary Ariyaratnam, (Eezham)
SEINE SAINT-DENIS (93) – Clichy-sous-Bois

Mme Sarmela Sabaratnam, (Eezham)
VAL D'OISE (95) – Louvres

Mme Sophia Soosaipillai, (Eezham)
VAL D'OISE (95) – Sarcelles

Mme Preetty Navaneetharaju, (Eezham)
ESSONNE (91) – Evry

Mme Asamtathayalini Willam-Reginald (Eezham)
SEINE ET MARNE (77) – Chelles

M. Arulasantham Puvanespararajah, (Eezham)
SEINE SAINT-DENIS (93) – La Courneuve

Mme Kalaiyarasi Raviendranathan, (Eezham)
VAL DE MARNE (94 ) – Villeneuve-Saint-Georges

M. Alain Anandane (Pondicheri)
SEINE SAINT-DENIS (93) – Drancy

M. Chandrasegaran Parassouramane (Pondicheri)
VAL D'OISE (95) – Villiers-le-Bel

Mme Shama Nilavannane (Pondicheri)
SEINE SAINT-DENIS (93) – Le Bourget

Mme Marie Darves-Bornoz (Guaduloupe)
HAUTS DE SEINE (92) – Bagneux

Mme Lilawtee Rajendram (Mauritius)
SEINE SAINT-DENIS (93) – Bondy

The European Union has expressed "very serious concerns" about human rights violations in Sri Lanka and warned that existing trade concessions could be at risk if the rights abuses continue. The EU also requested diplomatic access to Vanni to deliver key messages to the Liberation Tigers.

EU Troika Director for Asia and External Relations James Moran warned that renewal of Sri Lanka’s trade status is jepordised over human rights abuses.  Photo Sanka idanagama/AFP/Getty Images.

“The EU continues to harbour very serious concerns about continuing reports of human rights abuses," said a statement issued at the end of a three-day visit by a six-member group representing the EU's current president Slovenia and future president France, as well as the European Commission and the EU Council of Ministers.

Speaking at a media conference at the European Commission office in Colombo, representatives from the EU reiterated their concern over the human rights situation in the country.

“Respect for human rights is one of the key principles underpinning Sri Lanka's relations with the European Union” said Janez Premoze, head of the three-member EU delegation.

“Nonetheless, the EU continues to harbour very serious concerns about continuing reports of human rights abuses” Premoze told reporters.

Trade concessions at risk

The statement issued on Tuesday, March 18, also warned of the possibility of the EU withholding trade concessions from Sri Lanka due to the island's worsening human rights record.

The delegation noted Sri Lanka's key clothing export industry has benefited by doing business with the EU, where trade concessions are given based on sustainable development and good governance.

Sri Lanka’s existing tariff concessions end this year and nations wishing to renew must show high labour, environment and human rights standards when they reapply.

James Moran, Asia Directorate at the European Commission linked trade concessions to human rights record and said that the extension of the GSP-plus concessions for Sri Lanka were yet to be considered.

He further added that concession requests would only be assessed when the concerned countries reapplied for the facility by October this year and would be governed by objective criteria including linkage between trade preferences and Human Rights.

Regret over IIGEP exit

Delegation head, Premoze, expressed regret that the Independent International Group of Eminent Persons (IIGEP) had decided to terminate their work with the Presidential Commission of Inquiry because of concerns about its compliance with international standards and institutional lack of support for the work of the Commission.

“The EU underlines the seriousness of calls by the IIGEP and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, for the government to deliver concrete results through taking cases to court,” he said.

IIGEP, headed by P. N. Bhagwati, a former Indian Chief Justice, was invited by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to monitor the workings of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry, set up in November 2006 to investigate 16 of the most serious rights abuses.

But the IIGEP resigned en masse in late February after declaring it was unable to carry out its work. Meanwhile, the Commission of Inquiry has yet to prosecute anyone in any of its 16 cases.

Access to Vanni

Mr. Premoze also said the EU remained committed to its present role as one of the Co-Chairs of the Tokyo process and, therefore, continued to believe in the importance of guaranteeing access to Killinochchi for diplomats.

He insisted that the Sri Lankan government should allow the Co-chairs of the 2002 peace process and the Norwegian facilitators to travel to the LTTE administered Vanni to meet the LTTE leaders to deliver key messages – including a request to resume the peace process, to observe humanitarian access and to respect human rights.

However, according to local reports the Sri Lankan government had rejected the EU request, citing the prevailing security situation in the areas administered by the LTTE, which is under attack by the military.

The EU delegation which was in Sri Lanka for three days met, among others, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Ministry Secretary, Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights, Minister of Science and Technology and Chairman APRC, President’s Advisor Basil Rajapaksa, Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the leader of the Opposition and leaders of other political parties including the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and the Tamil National Alliance.

Sri Lankan Foreign Affairs Minister, Rohitha Bogollagama has said that kidnappings are normal in society and no one should make an undue fuss about such incidents.

He made this statement in reply to a question posed by a journalist at a news conference last Wednesday, when a journalist asked for his comments on the kidnapping of two women, one Sinhala and one Tamil, in Batticaloa on March 10.

Stating that investigations are underway, the Minister said it was unlikely that there would be a link between the kidnapping and the Batticaloa local council elections.

“Kidnapping is something very common and therefore there is no need to fuss about it,” he asserted.

He also said that it was not the first time that a kidnapping had taken place in the country and therefore, there was no reason to be excited about it.

Despite international concern and calls for the Sri Lankan government to reign in the deteriorating human rights situation, abductions and disappearances in war-torn Northeast and in the capital Colombo, blamed on the Sri Lankan security forces, has increased in recent weeks.

The US State Department’s Human Rights reports on Sri Lanka, published in mid-March highlighted that "the overwhelming majority of victims of human rights violations, such as killings and disappearances, were young male Tamils."

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, also noted that those who disappear are "primarily young ethnic Tamil men."

Backing the US report and the UN high commissioners accusations, both local and international media reported numerous cases of abductions and disappearances that took in the past few weeks alone.

On Sunday March 16, Yogarajah Arunrajah, 21, a Tamil youth who had come from Jaffna to go abroad, was forcibly dragged away from his residence at Sangamiththa Mawata by armed men in police uniform, reported TamilNet. His mother complained to Kotahena police, whilst relatives sought assistance from Deputy Minister P. Rathakrishnan, an Upcountry Peoples' Front parliamentarian. Though Mr. Rathakrishnan contacted the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the Terrorist Investigation Department (TID), he was unable to obtain information on Arunrajah’s whereabouts .

Jaffna, a peninsula surrounded by sea, except for a narrow strip of land joining it with the rest of the island of Sri Lanka, has always had a special history of its own. For more than one and a half years now, this peninsula has been cut off from the rest of the island, after the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) closed the only land route through the narrow strip of land, thus isolating its more than 400,000 residents. This one and half year history of isolation adds to the already unique history of this peninsula in a spectacularly terrifying manner.

People have been "marked, stalked and hunted for pleasure" in this period as described by one writer. The other aspects of this one and half year history are what ought to be studied, for it gives not only staggering lessons on how to "manufacture consent," it also exemplifies how the world can turn a blind eye to such staggering "consent manufacturing."

An understanding of this life in the Jaffna peninsula can be gleaned through what the Jaffna residents face at home, on the road, through their vehicle ownership, and how they can contact their relatives elsewhere.

At home

The concept of home being a person's own castle is well and truly abolished in Jaffna. The military will enter homes at anytime of the day. They need not enter by knocking and waiting for the door to open. They could just break open the door. They jump the fence from front or back. It is just called "checking."

The military often orders people to cut off or break down the fence surrounding their homes so that it is easier for the military to observe their homes.

Such military orders are obeyed without question because there is no other authority to which appeals can be made. What an individual military person orders must be obeyed or else.

The vast majority of homes in Jaffna are supplied by water from wells in their own yard. The residents bathe at their own wells. The perimeter fence provides privacy as there are no "bathrooms" as such for most homes. When the perimeter fences are cut down, the women in the homes lose their privacy even during bathing.

All residents at every home must take a group photo and have it ready when the military comes to "check." If there is a person in the home who is not on the group photo, that person immediately becomes a suspect and is arrested. Thus, even close relatives cannot stay overnight at other relatives' homes. The acute problems faced by people, in the context of arbitrary curfews as described below, is easy to gauge.

On the road

There are three aspects to people's lives on the road: the military checkpoints every 100 meters, the randomness of curfews, and the convoy time. The military can stop anyone they fancy at any of these checkpoints. People are totally at the mercy of the military personnel.

The randomness of curfew causes untold hardships to travelers. If one takes a bus destined to a location, the different curfew times at these various locations must be taken into account. As if this is not enough, these curfews can be suddenly changed. It is common for people to be stuck on the road in the bus throughout the night because they can neither go to their destination nor to the starting point because of sudden changes in curfew times.

It is a common sight to see small business people waiting with their stocks at junctions early in the morning, waiting to take their stock to the market. These people are used to starting work very early in the morning, and the curfew forces them to delay their business activities. They come and wait at junctions to start their business activities without delay and are held back at the junctions by the military.

Perhaps most interesting is the introduction of new terminology to describe how people can get stuck because all traffic is blocked for military convoys even outside curfew time. "Konvoyapochchu" has become part of the Jaffna lingo to say how people were delayed for hours due to this phenomenon.

There is one more shocking experience that Jaffna people are put through while on the road. The activities of military death squads have been reported. When someone is shot and killed, no one dares to go and assist them for fear of military reprisals. The body will lie on the spot until the judge arrives and clears it for removal to the hospital. This can take several hours during the daytime. School children, workers and shoppers must just walk past the dead body as if it is not there. Close family members could be seen sitting on the road wailing near their loved one, but no one, not even those known to them, dare to go near to console them or offer them any assistance.

Owning vehicles

All vehicles, including bicycles, must be registered with the military with the owner's photo. This is in addition to the usual civil registration of vehicles. Only the owner can use the vehicle and must carry this military registration. Relatives can be registered to use the vehicle, but their photos are not included. Therefore, if a relative is caught using the vehicle, he/she can immediately become a suspect.

The military will commandeer a vehicle from anyone for their own use. Motorbikes are commandeered while very old people with heavy items are traveling on them, leaving the old person in the middle of the road with their heavy items. After commandeering the vehicle, the owner will be told to come and collect it in a week at a specified military camp. This camp could be very far from the vehicle owner's residence. Besides, a visit to the military camp itself is a blood-curdling experience for the Jaffna resident.

Contacting relatives

If Jaffna residents have close family members living in Vanni, they better forget making contact with them. This can be a serious source of danger to them. Those who dared to defy the military to contact their relatives have been warned to stop the contact. Even if it is their own child or spouse, they are barred from contacting those living in Vanni.

Young families have remained separated and the military has refused to let those in Jaffna rejoin their family in Vanni. People in Vanni have sought to stop their names appearing even in purely civilian news, fearing for the safety of their families living in Jaffna.

VIPs

Local VIPs like the Government Agent of Jaffna, Jaffna University Vice Chancellor, and the Bishop of Jaffna have been warned by the military not to speak out about the conditions in Jaffna. There have been many international VIPs who have visited Jaffna during these one and a half years. They are not permitted to meet people in private where they can hear their views unmonitored by the military.

This, then, is the context in which the death squads are killing people on a daily basis, rapes are occurring regularly and ransom demands are being made with death threats. The situation is so staggering that most readers will find it difficult to believe what is said here.